Letting go....

There comes a point in life when you have to stand and face your fears.  You have to hit them head on or they will consume you.... engulf you... swallow you up.  This week was my week for this.  It's not the first time. I am certain it won't be the last (unless I meet my maker and I wouldn't mind that at all!  Come, Lord Jesus, Come!).  But this was a difficult one for me.  And it is one I will have to work on over and over and over.

This week, I let my dream die as I knew it and released myself from the responsibility of trying to keep it alive. 

As you know, we have been treading horrible ground for quite some time now with our daughter, adopted at 3/12 years of age from CPS.  We have had some very precious years with her, when she was younger, but the last few have been a nightmare.  I couldn't write it all out if I tried.  It's so much.  But what I can say is that it has been filled with attacks, lies, hatred, mental illness, filth, anger, rage, denial, deception, distrust, disgust, heartbreak, pain, sadness.... evil.  It has just been wrapped in evil.  It has been a suffocating journey.

And this week, we have reached the end of the journey as it has been. 

I wish I could say that was a good thing.  I wish I was celebrating prayers answered the way I wanted them answered.  But I can't.  I don't know if I ever will.  The end of this journey and the beginning of the next journey, are both marked by the darkest dark I have ever known.  And I pray that I will ever know. 

This week and this post, marks goodbye.

Our family has endured a great deal of blessings over the years. I am married to one of the most selfless men in the world.  He works hard for his family no matter how his health is.  He is steady and consistent in his love and devotion.  And he is 100% trustworthy with his loyalty to our family.  I have some amazing kids.  AMAZING.  I have one in the military.  He has overcome many obstacles from his own pre-adoption years and though he has other things still yet to get through and grow through, he has come a long way.  I am proud of the decision he has made to serve his country and I am very hopeful for a bright future as he keeps figuring things out and learning he doesn't actually know everything after all.  I have an amazing son who is still in high school that has a soul that I find hard to believe is inside of a teen body.  He has personal convictions and wisdom far beyond his years.  He has a heart for Christ like I have never seen before in a kid and he knows who he is and doesn't waiver.  He is willing to sacrifice a lot to stay true to who Christ has called him to be.  It is humbling.  My youngest is my sunshine.  She has an exuberance for life that is contagious and spreads light into every dark corner.  She has an innocence the world has not robbed and a joy that cannot be made by man.  And then there is my Tuffy.  He changed the world in just 3 years and continues to change our lives for the better every day.  He taught us how to truly live in the moment. The blessings of our day to day are remarkable and I am sincerely grateful when I stop and really take it all in. 

But life brings challenges and I can also fairly say that our family has had a huge amount of those to deal with as well. This current journey has brought some of the darkest sense of pure evil and it has been bone chilling.  I have thought several times, if this situation was a Lifetime movie, I would find it hard to believe.  It's felt that unreal and something one would only read about, not actually live.  Not at least when you are from a simple life like ours. 

Sadly, it's not fiction and even sadder, it doesn't appear to have the happy ending we would dream it would have.  This week, I have faced that reality, and I am beginning to hit my fears in it all head on.  It isn't easy.  Harder than saying "see you soon" to my sweet boy when he left for his eternal home far too soon for me. I have said a million times, his journey was without question, held in the hand of God.  I saw God's face constantly.  It was beautiful.  This fear... is so buried in darkness I have to grab and hold to the word of God to keep from succumbing to the eeriness of the darkness.  Sometimes it is so heavy I can feel Satan breathing down my neck.  It's horrifying.

And it has held me in captivity of it's grip more than I have even realized for quite some time.  This week, I have begun to look it straight in the face and I am claiming my freedom, in Jesus name.

Our daughter is ill.  We have had several psychological tests over the past few years and have a hint of what is wrong from those, but I believe it is so much deeper than the tests have revealed, and than even I was willing to admit until recently.  But today, in light of the understanding that it is time to face this fear, I am no longer approaching this the way I have been.  Today, I am calling it like it is.

I will not go into the details of all that has transpired.  I do not intend to turn this into a gossip column and I don't intend to use this as a time to "get even" with my daughter.  She is a very broken person and her natural consequences are going to be enough to deal with all on their own. 

What I am going to do, however, is face my fear and be completely real.  I believe that there are others that are dealing with a teen in crisis, some through adoption like us, some for other reasons.  But I know we aren't the first and won't be the last, to feel like our worst fears are coming to fruition.  We aren't the first to feel the breath of Satan so near the stench can almost be detected.  So now we have to do the only thing we know left to do.  We have to start the journey of openness for God to do what He does.  If I don't let this out there, maybe someone else will suffer endlessly in their own grief story, alone and without the hope of freedom in Christ. That would be just what Satan would want.  To hold us prisoner and not allow God to work through our darkest days.  Nope.  NOPE!

So I will share just only what I feel is necessary.  Nothing more.  Nothing less. 

My biggest fear I am facing off is not the monster of the story that is taking place.  It is horrific and ugly in the worst possible way.  But my fear, in all actually, is not protecting the little girl that we have spent the past 15 years fighting to protect, while exhausting every avenue to help her and protect the rest of us at the same time.  One of the scariest things for me was literally looking at my tear stained face in the mirror and seeing the reality in my own eyes, that it was time to stop.  STOP.  S-T-O-P!

Two days, and many prayers later, here I sit.  I have stopped... or at least begun the process of trying. 

Our daughter is a runaway.  She thrives in the danger that it creates and has put herself in intentional harms way over 11 times in the last year and a half and as a final attempt to protect ourselves, we have had her in Teen Challenge.  She had 58 write ups and was kicked out of that program and then we lost her altogether.  She blames everyone and everything good or bad in her life.  She lies, deceives, steals, attacks, and plays victim to anyone and everyone that tries to help her.  We have sought help in every avenue we possibly could and can honestly say we have left no stone unturned.  And if our daughter would stop her chaos long enough, she would be able to say this as well. 

But she is too sick and to caught up in the twisted web to know anything about any reality anymore. 

That has led her to a place of no return.  We have sat and listened to some of the most sickening revelations from police of what has occurred in her life... what she brought on herself... but what obviously is the horrific consequences of placing herself intentionally outside the safety of the umbrella of our Savior.  She has led herself right into the physical hands of the enemy, and even as we work with police on her behalf, she continues to put herself in danger and exposure that is just begging for more trauma.

As a result, we are letting go.  We have worked with police to get her to a safe shelter.  She is not utilizing that protection any more than she was willing to utilize our protection.  She is old enough that by law she is responsible for her own behavior.  We have done all we can in all ways we can and we are closing the door to the danger.  We are putting our other children's safety and protection first. 

She is currently in a different state.  She is fully delusional in her thinking and yet can seem almost sane and normal.  She has created social media and is trying to connect to people from her past and is presenting herself in a way that seems like life is great. That alone, after all that has been revealed to us through the authorities, warrants deep concern of her lack of reality awareness. 

To have been through what she has been through, this is clearly more evidence of her irrational and crazy thinking.  We have offered her the opportunity to go into a psychological facility to get the deep help she needs, but she refused.  Therefore, we will work with police, but that is all we are now willing to do.

I cannot tell you the fear that comes with saying "enough."  I cannot begin to explain how emotional and warped my own thinking gets because of all the different scenarios that come to mind over and over of "what if".  She is connected to some of the darkest people on the streets of the large city she is in.  She has acted as a snitch upon the police locating her, and now she is dangerously putting herself out there on social media to be easily found.  My mind goes crazy when I think of what could happen.

I have cried to my husband and been almost frantic at least once a day for the last few weeks.  He has been steady and clear... "Robin, we can't control it.  We CAN'T control it." It has felt like God was silent.  And He has been. Then He spoke... simple, quiet, yet  powerful...He spoke.

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD!

I can't control it... but he does.  He DOES.  He has given all of human kind freewill and we have choices and consequences both good and bad to every choice we make.  But none of it is ever... EVER beyond his control.  He is GOD.  Be still, Robin!  HE IS GOD!!!

So I am letting go and saying goodbye to the terrifying grip of Satan through this.  I am not going to own her choices in my life any longer.  I am not going to feel Satan's heavy breath inches from my neck anymore.  I am not going to beg, plead, force, talk, fear, explain, justify, or protect trying to get her where I think she needs to be.  I am going to stop.  STOP.  S-T-O-P!

I don't know how I will walk on easily.  It is going to be a lot of work.  I am going to need a lot of support and understanding.  I am going to need real people that will say the real truth to me and understand if I get defensive or broken.  It is hard to let go.  She is out there.  The danger and pure evil that she has invited in is more real than any mother should ever have to know.  And it is my nature to want to try to fix it all.. for all of us, but especially her.  So I will be weak.  I will slip back and get caught up in it.  I know this, because in the past two days I have already done it a million times. And I can't guarantee that I will be immediately ok when I am reminded that I have to stop. STOP. S-T-O-P.  I might even get mad.  I might even think, "You don't understand.  You can't understand.  So don't tell me what to do!  Don't tell me what to think!" But I won't mean it.  And I am sorry in advance if I say it.

What I will really mean is, "This is killing me.  I feel like I am suffocating and drowning in this dying dream and I don't always know how to handle it best in the worst moments."

It hurts beyond anything I can describe.  She has done horrible things.  Said horrible things.  Accused horrible things.  Lived horrible things.  I saw what God intended the day she bounced into my heart from her broken beginnings.  And it is crushing to see her rush back to that brokenness with a desire to live it even worse than ever.  And I know the dreams I had for her are forever changed, this side of heaven.

The police have even warned us of her danger.  That is permanently there.  There are certain things that she may never recover from... and right now doesn't even want to try.  She is so lost in herself that she doesn't even really have a grasp on how bad things have been... how bad the people have been... and the permanent effects on her life, even if it all stopped right now.  And she hasn't even stopped.

I am standing on the promises of God.  We have truly planted seeds.  She will deny it.  She will accuse anyone and anything right now that isn't doing or saying exactly what she wants, but we have planted love, hope, and joy through Jesus all of her life with us.  And God knows.  He KNOWS.  And He says, "Train a child in the way they are to go and when they are old, they will not part from it." 

God doesn't lie.

I don't know that we will see it this side of heaven.  I don't think we will ever have our daughter in our life and in the successes we dreamed for her.  I can't even find those dreams in my thoughts right now.  I just see her darkness and the darkness of her consequences. 

But God doesn't lie.

I may never have her in my life and see the things I thought would be our future together.  But I feel like God will reveal Himself as victor in our lives over this one way or another.

And the start of that is to publicly let this go.  It's a death in some ways.  I will be grieving.  I may not know how to get from one moment to the next for a while.  And I am so angry at the system that has so let us down as we begged anyone and everyone we could find, to help us.  We have to continue to work with police and hope that the "bad guys" get justice.  So a lot is ahead.  But I just know I can't do this the way I have been any more. I have to protect my kids, my family, friends, neighbors.... I have to set her free.

We will be 100% her parents.  We are not emancipating.  We will be connected through the police and they will always know how to find us.  We are connected to the safe shelter we have her in.  But we will not be connected to her and will no longer be searching for her. 

We will pray.

I am asking you to join me.  Pray for her.  More than you pray for any of us, pray for her. But then, please do pray for us. Each of us have our own road of healing.  We have kept our youngest very sheltered, but even she is aware of the runs.  She knows bad things have happened. God has protected her innocence beyond understanding bad choices have happened.  But she has had to live a lot of years under the rejection. 

And pray for me to keep my focus.  Pray for my mom-flesh to stay under the total guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Pray I will not hold responsibility for things I cannot be responsible for.  Pray I will not try to soften her road any longer so that the Lord can reach her when she finally reaches rock bottom.  And pray that I remember I cannot protect the world from the effects of her and I have to trust God to give each person she comes in contact with, immeasurable wisdom and protection.

And please, if she tries to contact you, don't think you are the "one" God will use to change her.  She will lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate you for as long as you allow her to.  Her only help, I truly believe, is for all favor to leave and to experience life with nowhere to turn but to God.  And for goodness sake, if you do get connected, please be aware of the dangerous people in her life and protect yourself and those you love.  These are people that will use her to get to any one of us.  Evil doesn't play favorites.  Do not be open.

I love my daughter...  I don't like her... but I love her to the depth of my soul.  I trust that God will be with her and ready when she is.  And I trust that each day, my face will be less tear- stained than the day prior. 

One step at a time.

Letting go... letting God. 

Never before has the overused statement had so much meaning.

If anyone has a rebellious teen, I would love to help you.  That helps me.  If you are a rebellious teen, I would love to talk more with you.  Just know the truth is ugly sometimes. 

And to my daughter, if ever you run across this blog... we will never stop praying for you.  We will never stop hoping for you.  But we will no longer be prison to the fear you bring to our lives through your horrendous choices. 

Robin.